25 April 2011

Was heliocentrism a 'gospel' that friends of Copernicus or Galileo would have been wise to 'preach'?

In any case, whatever the 'natural salesman' disposition is, I have the opposite. I hate selling and I hate being sold to. First and only telemarketing job, I lasted one afternoon. Conversely, I hang up on them without a word when they call (saving their time as well as mine, no?) and Jehovah's witnesses always get a brusque door slam. Don't sell me anything, and don't make me sell to anyone else.

In a word, I don't want to evangelize. Ever.

However.

Policy is the point of this blog. Its goal is to present a pool of practical proposals for that mythic future day when Science turns to Government and says, 'HBD is real. Public policy should reflect that.'

But Science won't. Not ever. Not even if Science woke up one day and decided, to a person, it were true. Why? Telling Government things is not Science's job (unless it's specifically asked to). Science doesn't have time. It's busy doing what it loves--science.

24 April 2011

Nicolaus Copernicus, the “heretical” 16th-century astronomer who was buried in an unmarked grave nearly 500 years ago, was rehabilitated by the Roman Catholic Church this weekend as his remains were reburied in the Polish cathedral where he had once been a canon.

The ceremonial reburial of Copernicus in a tomb in the medieval cathedral at Frombork on Poland’s Baltic coast is seen as a final sign of the Church’s repentance for its treatment of the scientist over his theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun, declared heretical by the Vatican in 1616.

"Heretical?" Copernicus wasn't a "heretical" astronomer; he was a heretical astronomer. The Pope being infallible, presumably when he declares something a heresy he means it. Whatever god is speaking to the current Pope doesn't get to play "backsies" with the one who spoke to Paul V.

The Times doesn't note the year the Vatican finally proclaimed heliocentrism the truth: 1992.

376 years later.

But no matter.

Hand-wringing over religious heresy (in Christendom anyway) has gone the way of the dodo. Why dredge up this dreadful word?